Re: Gnulib automation on Windows (was: bug#13026: Assume POSIX 1003.1-1988 or later for signal.h.)

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> Date: Sat, 08 Dec 2012 09:34:05 -0800
> From: Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu>
> CC: emacs-devel@gnu.org
> 
> On 12/08/2012 02:13 AM, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> >> Date: Fri, 07 Dec 2012 18:40:57 -0800
> >> > From: Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu>
> >> > 
> >> > As an aside, it'd be nicer if lib/Makefile were computed more
> >> > automatically from lib/gnulib.mk on Microsoft platforms, so
> >> > that this sort of thing wouldn't require manual editing.
> 
> > That requires Windows to use the Posix configure script.
> 
> I was thinking of something more modest, namely to change
> nt/configure.bat to copy the needed rules from
> lib/gnulib.mk to lib/Makefile.

I don't see how this could work: gnulib.mk uses Unixy shell features,
so running "make" will need such a shell.

> This step wouldn't all need to be done in configure.bat; it could be
> precomputed on a POSIXish platform, if the Windows tools aren't up
> to doing what 'sed' can do.  Ideally lib/makefile.w32-in could just
> say "include gnulib.mk" but it might need to include a modified
> version of gnulib.mk instead.

Sed is not the main problem here.  Shell commands are.  I don't know
how to automatically convert Bourne shell commands to commands cmd.exe
can grok.  It might be possible using something like msdos/sed*.inp,
but those Sed scripts would then need the kind of maintenance effort
we are trying to avoid here.

> But if the plan is to port 'configure' to Windows perhaps
> this idea would be a distraction.

That's what I think should be done, if we want the maintenance burden
for the Windows configury to become significantly lower.